Question

I have some javascript objects that I’d like to collaboratively manipulate, but am having a hard time understanding the best way to achieve this in Meteor. These objects are NOT bound to specific collections, but rather live in-memory alongside the Templates that serve GUIs that are bound to collections.

I figured two things:

(1) Perhaps I should circumvent Meteor’s native pub/sub stuff for this and simply leverage the existing SockJS infrastructure inside Meteor. I was able to get the SockJS URL from Meteor, but haven’t successfully made a SockJS call yet. (I can provide more detail if need be)

(2) Or maybe leverage the existing pub/sub options in Meteor and use a Template as a shim to listen for updating. I looked here for that, but so far, haven’t been able to iron out the kinks. Perhaps I should use a collection as a shim as well?

Again, these are NOT bound to collections, and I’d suspect vanilla SockJS or socket.io to be fairly straightforward on how to broadcast the changes. So, I’m struggling on how to incorporate collaboration in a Meteor app that doesn’t originate with a collection being updated. I want to pursue one of the above, but would like to know which approach seems most feasible? Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

I ended up using the new constant block helper that was released with Meteor 0.4.0 to keep my out-of-Meteor-scope javascript objects from being manipulated by Meteor:

http://meteor.com/blog/2012/08/31/introducing-spark-a-new-live-page-update-engine

This lets me update these objects via a different means than Meteor.